Laguna Art Museum Decides to Cancel Asian Philosophy Exhibit

As a cost-saving measure, the Laguna Art Museum has canceled a traveling exhibition to have opened next month.

The museum completed the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31 with an estimated surplus of $3,000, according to director Charles Desmarais. But it could not find an underwriter for “The Transparent Thread: Asian Philosophy in Recent American Art,” a 70-piece exhibit organized in New York exploring the impact on American contemporary artists of Eastern philosophy such as Taoism and Zen Buddhism.

The exhibit would have cost the museum $50,000 to import, install and promote. “We don’t always have underwriters for every exhibit, and in better times we might have simply absorbed the cost and found other sources of revenue” to pay for the exhibit, Desmarais said. “But it was a (financial) risk I just didn’t think was responsible for us to take in this environment.

“We are behind our (fund-raising) goals for this fiscal year already, and it’s only a month into the year,” Desmarais added.

On the bright side, Desmarais said, the decision to cancel “The Transparent Thread” will enable the museum to extend two popular exhibits--”Dream and Perspective: The American Scene in Southern California, 1930-1945” and “Self-Help Artists: Painting and Printmaking in East L.A.”--through Feb. 9.

The museum has also announced that it has elected Jon R. Erickson as its new board president. Erickson is a partner in the audit division of the Arthur Andersen & Co. accounting firm in Irvine.